The Morocco-US Free Trade Agreement:
A Death Sentence for Moroccan Patients and the Local Pharmaceutical
Industry.

Act Up-Paris
November 4, 2003

The 5th round of negotiations of a free trade agreement between Morocco
and the United States has just ended. This agreement, which is to be
signed before the end of the year, represents an unprecedented threat
for Moroccan patients as well as for the local pharmaceutical industry.

The WTO Agreements already require Intellectual Property protection
standards from the WTO Member States. WHO and IMF experts, among
others, have demonstrated that these agreements will have a disastrous
impact on health in developing countries. Right now, no satisfactory
solution has been found to limit the serious consequences of these WTO
Agreements.

Despite all this and at the expense of the populations of developing
countries, the US has adopted a new strategy to increase the protection
level of pharmaceutical monopolies: the US is trying to impose its
intellectual property demands through bilateral and regional
agreements. Such efforts come on top of the continuous pressure on
developing countries at the WTO.
These demands greatly exceed the WTO standards and compel developing
countries to accept protection systems for monopolies, which are much
more restrictive than those in rich countries.

Morocco, as well as many other countries (South Africa, Thailand,
countries in Central America and South America) are confronted with
these incredible and unacceptable requirements. As a matter of fact,
there are clauses which not only aim at reinforcing the monopoly
position of pharmaceutical giants, but also extend patent duration and
exclusive rights.

Thus the US forces developing countries to waive rights for which they
have fought so hard at the WTO: the right to grant compulsory licences
and the freedom to determine the grounds upon which such licences are
granted, the right to resort to parallel imports freely at the global
level, the right to market generic drugs after 20 years of patent
protection, the right of national regulation authorities to register
generic drugs on the basis of the registration files of original
products, without requiring new clinical tests, etc.

To maintain a highly profitable activity without actually coming up
with therapeutic innovations, the only strategy of the pharmaceutical
industry consists in reinforcing and extending monopolies. It thereby
chooses to imperil the lives of millions of patients irrevocably.

Governments are responsible for the welfare of their people. In Morocco
and everywhere else, governments must reject the demands of the US and
pharmaceutical transnationals, which will only bring death and ruin.
France and all other European countries which support the policy of
pharmaceutical companies by accepting to pay higher prices for
medicines without making sure their products are really innovative,
must immediately and publicly denounce the American policy in
developing countries.
And the WHO must urgently demand to have health excluded from all trade
negotiations.

Act Up-Paris is calling for a freeze on all current negotiations on
bilateral agreements until the WTO comes up with an evaluation of the
impact on health of the agreements that have already been implemented.